When my good friend Jael Bharat emailed me a while ago from Oxford about his stroke, I posted what he had written without including his name. Now he’s emailed to say that part of one sentence was omitted in the version he sent to his friends. You can find the correct version here.

And while you’re about it, have a look at the rest of Jael and Sandy’s Spirituality for Daily Life website.

Technorati Tags: inter-faith, interfaith, spiritual, spirituality

My new optometrist, Nigel Burnett Hodd, reminded me yesterday that I had had my first contact lenses in December 1963. They were fitted, at a cost of ?43, by K Clifford Hall. Of course, ?43 in those days would be the equivalent of some ?700 today.

This was my first contact lens check-up since January 2004. David Evershed-Martin, who was my optometrist, developed cancer. Thankfully he’s now over his chemo and is, apparently well. He’s retired from his London practice and recommended Mr Burnett Hodd. That’s how it’s been since 1963. After Mr Clifford Hall retired, I was passed on to Miss Kathleen Thompson, who had been his assistant. When she retired she passed me on to Mr Evershed-Martin, and he passed me on to Mr Burnett Hodd.

It seems to be a family business. Mr Burnett Hodd’s father had been trained by Clifford Hall. Mr Evershed-Martin’s father had been one of the pioneers of corneal contact lenses in the UK. They all know each other and, it is passing on down to the next generation. Mr Burnett Hodd’s daughter is training as an optometrist, it seems.

Computer-based technology has had a huge impact on optometry since my first session with Clifford Hall 42 years ago. Mr Burnett Hodd and his able technician tested and measured my eyes for focal length, field of vision, and glaucoma by a range of machines, including what to me was a new experience, having my retinas photographed. Not a pleasurable experience - the machine flashed a bright light through my pupils that left me seeing nothing but a purple disk for several moments. But the pictures which came up on the computer screen were fascinating: there were my retinas, my optic nerve, my macula, the blood vessels, all showing in colour. Mr Burnett Hodd then used the mouse to draw a green line around the optic nerve of each eye, the computer performed a quick analysis and showed where there might be worrying thinning of the optic nerve due to glaucoma.

I’m glad to say I got green ticks around most of my optic nerves. Just a couple of yellow cautions for one eye.

And finally the machine in the upstairs room that takes photos of the almost the entire inside surface of the eye. This was a new machine and I paid extra for its services, but Mr Burnett Hodd informed me that it had allowed him to detect ’serious pathologies’ in five of his patients. Without the machine no one would have known about them until the conditions were more serious.

Forty-five minutes later and quite a bit lighter in the wallet I walked out into the hot summer sun on Devonshire Street with a clean bill of optic health and the welcome news that I would not need new lenses or specs. Not this time, anyway.

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A Bedouin tent in the City of London seems a positively eccentric thing to have built, but it is there, behind the St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, of which it is a part. The Tent, which was opened by Prince Charles on 4 May, provides an interesting space for inter-faith dialogue, intimate, warm and… well, it has to be said, odd. Mind you, odd is not a bad thing. In fact, odd is a good thing, since it helps demolish the walls of preconception that tend to divide us.

Last night I spoke as part of the Tent’s Voices programme. The theme was spiritual authority: its role and how we relate to it. There were two other speakers: Dr Usama Hasan, an astronmer and imam, and Citisakti Devadasi, a Hindu priest (who also happens to be a psychiatrist). A common theme was the need for a guide on the spiritual path. For Usama, his guides have been various teachers he has turned to throughout his life and training as a scholar and imam. He showed us his ‘family tree’, the chain of scholars and teachers who linked him back to the Prophet Muhammad - there were only 25 names in the chain, covering 14 centuries.

Citisakti spoke about her spiritual master, who had departed the earth one year and two days before. For her, the link with God was through her guru, who was a pure being, free of ego.

Ego was another theme than ran through the evening. How does one know whether the teacher, guide, spiritual master or what you will who is guiding you on the path is a true person, someone who’s guidance one can trust?

I reflected on the centrality in Baha’i thinking and practice of the independent investigation of truth - an inescapable responsibility that each and every one of us has. I also reflected on the responsibility that rests on everyone who has recognized Baha’u'llah to teach others and to guide them to the Word of God. And it is the Word of God that is the final authority. The first two paragraphs of Baha’u'llah’s Tablet to Manikchi Sahib (in the newly published Tabernacle of Unity volume) are eloquent testimony to the Primal Word:

In the Name of the One True God

Praise be to the all-perceiving, the ever abiding Lord Who, from a dewdrop out of the ocean of His grace, hath reared the firmament of existence, adorned it with the stars of knowledge, and admitted man into the lofty court of insight and understanding. This dewdrop, which is the Primal Word of God, is at times called the Water of Life, inasmuch as it quickeneth with the waters of knowledge them that have perished in the wilderness of ignorance. Again it is called the Primal Light, a light born of the Sun of divine knowledge, though whose effulgence the first stirrings of existence were made plain and manifest. Such manifestations are the expressions of the grace of Him Who is the Peerless, the All-Wise. He it is who knoweth and bestoweth all. He it is who transcendeth all that hath been said or heard…

It is clear and evident, therefore, that the first bestowal of God is the Word, and its discoverer and recipient is the power of understanding. This Word is the foremost instructor in the school of existence and the revealer of Him who is the Almighty. All that is seen is visible only through the light of its wisdom. All that is manifest is but a token of its knowledge. All names and are but its name, and the beginning and end of all matters must needs depend upon it.

And I spoke of the authority of the Manifestation, of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, of the elected institutions. I emphasized that no individual has the kind of spiritual authority in the Faith that individuals in other faiths do. And I spoke of the importance of consultation as a means of deepening our understanding of the Word, which has 70 times 70 meanings.

When each of the three had spoken, there was time for questions and answers. Then a tea break. And then open discussion, each of the 20 or so participants free to speak from her or his own perspective about spiritual authority. An elderly Anglican lady said something that seemed very sensible: she didn’t think in terms of spiritual guides who were far ahead on the path; rather she preferred the thought of a companion on the journey who may already have travelled that bit of the path. Ah, I thought, like a study circle tutor: not an authority, but a companion on the path. I tried to make it clear that we are all learning together, but some of the participants were clearly fascinated at the notion of an individual ‘master’ or guide.

A lady told me during the break that she was on a spiritual search and greatly attracted to the Faith. She and an Anglican chap plied me with questions about the Faith throughout the break. When I returned to the Tent for the second half of the evening, I found another lady looking through my copy of Tabernacle of Unity and asking where she could buy it. She had Baha’i friends and thought they would help her to get hold of it. I said it was only newly available in the UK - she may scare the wits out of her Baha’i friends by knowing about a volume of Baha’i scripture that they haven’t yet realized is available! She was clearly deeply attracted to this beautiful section of that wonderful Tablet.

The evening allowed people to speak from their hearts. Justine Huxley, who organizes the Voices programme, was glad that I felt this way and that I didn’t have to defend the ‘official’ Baha’i line. I should have explained, but didn’t, that Baha’is don’t distinguish in this way between the ‘official’ line and their own personal ‘line’. We acknowledge that we have diverse understandings - how could we not, given the diversity of our backgrounds and ways of thinking? - but that we always turn to the Centre of the Covenant for authoritative guidance.

Of course, one always hears some nonsense during such dialogue sessions. One lady spoke of ‘indigo children‘ - she was in contact with her master (or masters) through deep trances, she said, speaking to people who were sometimes thousands of years old.

After the session, I walked from St Ethelburga’s, along Bishopsgate, to Liverpool Street Station through the cooling evening air. Traffic was much lighter than it had been earlier in the evening when I arrived. I caught up with the elderly Anglican lady and we chatted about inter-faith dialogue and spiritual authority. i told her I liked the idea of companions on the journey - not authorities, but fellow travellers.

The Tent has a special place in my heart. I was invited to represent the Faith during the opening ceremony on 4 May. I was asked to speak for no more than a minute (!) about why inter-faith dialogue is important for Baha’is. Representatives of other faiths did the same. Prince Charles was sitting in the front row listening to all of this (we were in the main body of St Ethelburga’s). A selected few, among them the Baha’i representative, then went into the Tent (which holds 20 comfortably) to present copies of their scriptures to the Tent for use in the dialogue sessions that take place there - I presented a copy of the Kitab-i-Iqan as most suitable for a space dedicated to inter-faith dialogue. Mindful of Baha’u'llah’s strictures in the Aqdas about those who sit by the door but covet the highest seat, I sat by the door - and tried hard not to covet the highest seat.

Somebody gave me a shove. ‘Go and sit over there,’ she said (’she’ was a Buddhist monk, if I remember correctly). ‘Over there’ was next door to Prince Charles. So casually, as if this was a daily occurrence, I got up, walked across the tent, and sat down next to the Prince. I mean, I was close enough that I could have nudged him with my right elbow. We were drinking chai from delicate glasses. He turned to me and commented on the beauty of the tent. And so the conversation got going: informal, light-hearted, one chap chatting to another chap about this wonderful tent and the importance of inter-faith dialogue. I truly felt that it would be wonderful to get to know him as a friend.

On my left was Princess Badiya el-Hasan of Jordan.

Me? A thorn between two roses.

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